From Thomas Rivers 9 September 1867
Nurseries, Sawbridgeworth, Herts.1
Sep 9/67
My Dear Sir/.
I am tempted to submit to you the result of a curious cross in peaches.
Some three years since my son wishing to raise, a fine peach with fine flowers, took some pollen from that brilliant beautiful variety the “Double Crimson Chinese peach” & fertilised carefully (ie removing the stamens from the female parent) some flowers of a variety called Leopold the 1st.2 this is a very large melting peach giving large pale flowers. Last spring one of the seedlings raised from the crossed flowers blossomed & to our surprise gave no sign of change, for its flowers were large & pale like its female parent, this tree escaped notice till very recently when it was found full of Almond-like fruit their pulp even harder & more almond-like than those given by the male parent the Double Crimson Chinese Peach.
I enclose two fruit
No. 1 is the seedling raised from the fertilised flowers
No. 2 is the fruit of the Double Crimson Peach the male parent of No. 1
The force of the male in making a fine large peach into a fruit more almond-like than itself is to me most surprising
Pray forgive my intrusion I am looking anxiously for your new book3
I am My Dr Sir | Yrs. very truly | Thos. Rivers
Footnotes
Bibliography
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Variation: The variation of animals and plants under domestication. By Charles Darwin. 2 vols. London: John Murray. 1868.
Summary
Reports on a curious cross in peach varieties, in which the male made a firm large peach into a fruit more almond-like than itself.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-5624
- From
- Thomas Rivers
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Sawbridgeworth
- Source of text
- DAR 176: 171
- Physical description
- ALS 2pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 5624,” accessed on 15 May 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-5624.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 15